William Horberg

Where Is This Place?

Maybe some of you have already seen this cellphone video from Tehran up on You Tube? 

A young woman, alone at night on her rooftop, gives a soliloquy to the night and the background sounds of protest and prayer.

It was posted 10 days ago, and the site lists about 140,000 views. 

But it deserves to be seen and read by millions, and maybe even to be taught in school someday, as a timeless poem of human struggle and resistance, sung alongside "We Shall Overcome" or other great anthems of protest. 

What makes it characteristically Iranian is the poetic quality of the speaker in this land of Hafez, whose repetitive question Where Is This Place? takes on the power of incantation and places it in the tradition of great Persian art.

Friday the 19th of June 2009

Tomorrow, Saturday

Tomorrow is a day of destiny

Tonight the cries of Allah-o Akbar

are heard louder and louder than the night before

Where is this place?

Where is this place where every door is closed?

Where is this place where people are simply calling God?

Where is this place where the sound 

of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder?

I wait every night to see if the sounds 

will get louder and whether the number increases?

It shakes me.

I wonder if God is shaken.

Where is this place where

so many innocent people are entrapped?

Where is this place where no one comes to our aid?

Where is this place where only with our silence

we are sending our voices to the world?

Where is this place where the young shed blood

and then people go and pray?

Standing on that same blood and pray...

Where is this place where the citizens are called vagrants?

Where is this place?

You want me to tell you?

This place is Iran.

The homeland of you and me.

This place is Iran.

On Friday June 19, 2009 the place was Iran, but clearly the sentiment here knows no real political or cultural boundary, as it embodies a deeper truth about the human experience that has sadly defined too many places and too many lives with no end in sight.

Pass it along.

william

Trouble

Of the many thrilling moments at the Academy's tribute to filmmaker Hal Ashby that kicked off last week with a screening of his classic black comedy "Harold and Maude" it was the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens taking the stage with his acoustic guitar and strumming out "Trouble", a tune from the soundtrack of the movie he said "I haven't played in over thirty years", that brought the audience to its feet. 

It was a moment and lyrics that seemed to sum up Ashby's rebel stance as the poster child of that generation of maverick directors. And it aptly demonstrated the love clearly engendered by the man and his work, a love that brought Yusuf, as he is now known, all the way in from London to sing a set of four songs that he originally composed for the movie.

Yusuf also participated in the panel discussion of Ashby by those who knew him, like moderator Peter Bart, who was the Paramount studio executive on Harold and Maude, or Jon Voight who starred in "Coming Home" and the later "Lookin' to Get Out", or Haskell Wexler, who shot several other of his films, and those of a newer generation who didn't know him personally but admired his work and took inspiration from him, like Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Diablo Cody and moderator and tribute organizer Cameron Crowe.

Harold and Maude is one of the more familiar Ashby films and it holds up well on the strength of the amazing performances of Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort, who made a surprise appearance after the movie and reminisced about how he got the role and what it was like working on the movie.

But the revelation of the series for me was "The Landlord", Ashby's first film from 1969 starring Beau Bridges, Pearl Bailey, Robert Klein, and the beautiful Diana Sands and Marki Bey as the black women that white landlord Bridges gets entangled with to comedic and tragic result. But the real surprise and delight was Lee Grant as the Mother. Her drunken scene over a lunch of ham hocks with tenant Pearl Bailey was a classic. 

The film is weird and wild, a product of its time for sure, but frank in issues of race as few movies today would dare to be. It was fascinating to see this film and Harold and Maude in the reverse order in which they were made, as you could feel Ashby working out his voice and style in The Landlord in a way that would be perfected in Maude and the amazing hot streak that followed including The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound For Glory, Coming Home and Being There.

Trouble 

Oh trouble set me free 

I have seen your face 

And it's too much too much for me 

Trouble 

Oh trouble can't you see 

You're eating my heart away 

And there's nothing much left of me 

I've drunk your wine 

You have made your world mine 

So won't you be fair 

So won't you be fair 

I don't want no more of you 

So won't you be kind to me 

Just let me go where 

I'll have to go there 

After a long downward career spiral in his final decade fueled by substance abuse and other "trouble" that ate his heart away, Ashby died of cancer at home in Malibu in December 1988.

But his best work is as timely and timeless as any great art, and thanks to Crowe and the Academy for giving him his due, however long overdue.

william

Iranian Bloggers Speak

From a friend in Iran, a young woman who has been a pioneer blogger there, comes this joint statement from the community of Iranian bloggers who have risked much to bring news of recent events there to the world:

بیانیه‌ی جمعی از وبلاگ‌نویسان درباره‌ی وقایع اخير

۱) ما، گروهی از وبلاگ‌نویسان ایرانی، برخوردهای خشونت‌آمیز و سرکوب‌گرانه‌ی حکومت ایران در مواجهه با راه‌پیمایی‌ها و گردهم‌آیی‌های مسالمت‌آمیز و به‌حق مردم ایران را به شدت محکوم می‌کنیم و از مقامات و مسوولان حکومتی می‌خواهیم تا اصل ۲۷ قانون اساسی جمهوری اسلامی ایران را-که بیان می‌دارد «تشكيل‏ اجتماعات‏ و راه‌ پيمايی‌ها، بدون‏ حمل‏ سلاح‏، به‏ شرط آن‏‌که‏ مخل‏ به‏ مبانی‏ اسلام‏ نباشد، آزاد است»-رعایت کنند.

۲) ما قانون‌ شکنی‌های پیش‌آمده در انتخابات ریاست جمهوری و وقایع غم‌انگیز پس از آن را آفتی بزرگ بر جمهوریت نظام می‌دانیم و با توجه به شواهد و دلایل متعددی که برخی از نامزدهای محترم و دیگران ارائه داده‌اند، تخلف‌های عمده و بی‌سابقه‌ی انتخاباتی را محرز دانسته، خواستار ابطال نتایج و برگزاری‌ِ مجدد انتخابات هستیم.

۳) حرکت‌هایی چون اخراج خبرنگاران خارجی و دستگیری روزنامه‌نگاران داخلی، سانسور اخبار و وارونه جلوه دادن آن‌ها، قطع شبکه‌ی پیام کوتاه و فیلترینگ شدید اینترنت نمی‌تواند صدای مردم ایران را خاموش کند که تاریکی و خفقان ابدی نخواهد بود. ما حکومت ایران را به شفافیت و تعامل دوستانه با مردم آن سرزمین دعوت می‌كنيم، امید داریم در آینده شکاف عظیم بین مردم و حکومت کم‌تر شود.

پنجم تیرماه ۱۳۸۸ خورشیدی
بخشی از جامعه‌ی بزرگ وبلاگ‌نویسان ایرانی

Statement by a group of Iranian bloggers about the Presidential elections and the subsequent events

1) We, a group of Iranian bloggers, strongly condemn the violent and repressive confrontation of Iranian government against Iranian people's legitimate and peaceful demonstrations and ask government officials to comply with Article 27 of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Constitution which emphasizes "Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam."

2) We consider the violations in the presidential elections, and their sad consequences a big blow to the democratic principles of the Islamic Republic regime, and observing the mounting evidence of fraud presented by the candidates and others, we believe that election fraud is obvious and we ask for a new election.

3) Actions such as deporting foreign reporters, arresting local journalists, censorship of the news and misrepresenting the facts, cutting off the SMS network and filtering of the internet cannot silence the voices of Iranian people as no darkness and suffocation can go on forever. We invite the Iranian government to honest and friendly interaction with its people and we hope to witness the narrowing of the huge gap between people and the government.

A part of the large community of Iranian bloggers

June 26, 2009

Thanks for your courage in bearing witness and speaking out.

william

The Friends of George V. Higgins

When people say that they love '70's movies, one of the movies they love must surely be Peter Yates' ultimate '70's crime story "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", a story of Boston bank robbers, gun dealers, Federal agents and low level mobsters and the poor schmuck caught in between them all, just out in a loving new Criterion Collection dvd edition. 

Featuring a performance by Robert Mitchum that feels like the boiled down essence of his life-long pursuit of heavy-lidded, cool-handed tough guys, and an impeccable supporting cast with ace character guys like Peter Boyle and Alex Rocco and Richard Jordan in virtually every part, along with a funky score by Dave Grusin that plays like the white man's Superfly, it is a movie to make you fall in love with movies all over again.

At the time it came out, I was actually more familiar with the book it was based on and the author who wrote it than Yates or anyone else involved with the film. George V. Higgins was the real deal, an assistant United States attorney who worked on organized crime cases, and turned his experience and talent and ear for great dialogue into a career as a crime novelist.

Eddie Coyle was his first and most famous book, but I also remember Digger's Game and Cogan's Trade and The Judgment of Deke Hunter as effective stories that felt bracingly authentic. His world was Boston and its suburbs and his characters were part of the crime scene there that bubbled along as a fact of every day life which I remember being vaguely conscious of when I lived there in the mid to late '70's myself.

Higgin's died suddenly of a heart attack before he got to turn 60, but he wrote a book about writing later in life. 

Here's a memorable quote from it that rings as true as Eddie Coyle's busted up fingers:

"The secret remains that there is no secret. The way to determine whether you have talent is to rummage through your files and see if you have written anything; if you have, and quite a lot, then the chances are you have the talent to write more. If you haven't written anything, you do not have the talent because you don't want to write. Those who do can't help themselves. We do it for the hell of it, and those who raise a lot of hell, and then get very lucky, well, we make a living, too. There are worse ways to travel through this vale of tears than by doing the things you love, and making a living at it."

That last sentence feels harder to do today than ever, but what is the point otherwise?

william

Plastichrome Summers

With the summer season upon us and the recession unabated for most of us, I thought it would be fun to share these photos I found in some old "plastichrome" and "kodachrome" technicolor souvenir albums, to remind us all of the simple pleasures out there and around us that don't cost an arm and a leg.

As the song says "the moon belongs to everyone, the best things in life are free."

1) King's Canyon

2) Meramec Caverns

3) Sequoia National Park

4) Yosemite

The fun part of this post is to try to match the book cover destinations above to the individual photos below. 

A) The Dome Room

B) Gone fishing

C) View of Half Dome

D) The Wine Table

How did you do? 

How many of these amazing natural wonders have you visited yourself? Kind of makes you want to jump in the "Woody" and go for ride, no?

Enjoy!

william

(answers = 1/B, 2/D, 3/A and 4/C)

Buddy Up!

My wife, the artist Elsa Mora, has been an inspiration to me and to countless others around the planet who have seen her fine art work in museums and galleries, her intricate paper cutting and craft work as featured in her Etsy store and her blog, and have read her personal stories of growing up in Cuba and her life as an artist there.

Now she has entered the publishing world with a book just out from German artpub Te Neues called "Blossom Buddies". If you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you to check it out here.

It has a fairy-tale history as it started with a backyard exploration one day by our autistic son Diego which led Elsa to make these little creatures out of flowers and other organic material she found in our modest garden. After photographing the "flower people" and posting a few of the pictures online, she was struck by the outpouring of comments about her creation. In the new way of the net she got an email out of the blue from a woman in Germany who worked as an editor at Te Neus and felt that the pictures and the idea behind them would make a great book. 

Having never heard of Te Neues before, Elsa researched them online and found that they are one of the major publishing houses in the world and one of the pioneers of the marketing of images in museum stores and art book stores everywhere. She became pen pals with the people in Germany who spearheaded the project, asking her to create and photograph hundreds of individual flower personalities in order to arrive at the images in this beautiful book.

Now less than a year later, having never met them in person, her book has arrived in both old school brick and mortar bookstores and virtual bookstores everywhere. 

The new way of the world!

Enjoy!

william

On The Way Home

Graham Greene never wrote a novel with that title.

But he started to, and he made notes on the characters and plot he intended to dramatize, which became a kind of running commentary throughout the book he did write, "Getting to Know The General" about a relationship he formed fairly late in his long life with the then-leader of Panama, General Omar Torrijos Herrera.

Greene's guide as he tours the backcountry of Torrijos' Panama, then divided into the Republic of Panama and the American-controlled Canal Zone, is a poet/mathematician named Chuchu who is working as a military aide to the General. His frequent refrain as they are shut out of various locations Greene is interested in investigating is they will see it "on the way back", and an idea takes place in the novelist's head - the story of a journey unfulfilled - "there would be no going back for my chief character."

The imagined elements of the book are typical of Greene's blend of exotic locale and political intrigue: "..the dangerous situation between Panama and the States; Chuchu himself; the bomb in his car; the expression he had used in the motel - "A revolver is no defense"..."

But later, in a really insightful look at the writing process from a master, he admits the reason he stumbled with this yarn and never got beyond sketching the first chapter or two: "for the first time as a novelist I was mistakenly trying to use real characters - the General, Chuchu - in my fiction. They had emerged from life and not from the unconscious and for that reason they stood motionless like statues in my mind - they couldn't develop, they were incapable of the unexpected word or action - they were real people and they could have no life independent of me in the imagination."

Instead Greene writes a compassionate account, almost a diary, of the many visits he makes to Panama as a guest of Torrijos during the crucial years of his negotiations with the United States over the treaty to turn control of the Canal Zone back to Panama; an agreement that was finally reached between Torrijos and President Carter, but then was controversially amended by the U.S. Senate after it had been signed by both countries in a lavish ceremony attended by the heads of state of all of the Latin American countries, which at that time included several right-wing dictators like Videla of Argentina, Stroessner of Paraguay and Pinochet of Chile.

As Greene relates the anecdote, Torrijos was unhappy that Carter invited these leaders to attend the signing, as none had supported him during his long years of struggle to gain the treaty. In the formal ceremony after the signing, he kept his distance and limited himself to a cool handshake with each. But the wily Pinochet noticed his actions, and as he approached, he grabbed him in a warm embrace so the media and the American people and the anti-Pinochet demonstrators filling the streets outside would all forever see Torrijos as one of his own kind.

In 1981, Omar Torrijos, "on his way home" by plane to a small village in the mountains of Panama, disappeared. The wreckage of the plane and his body were later found, and while at the time it was denied, subsequent revelations make it more widely believed today that he was the victim of a CIA bomb in his plane, just the kind of bomb that Greene imagined in the plot of the book he never wrote!

william

Father's Day

There are a lot of memorable memoirs of dysfunctional family life out there, portraits of fathers by sons and daughters that shine a light on shadowy corners of the human soul with humor or pathos or both. 

On my recent trip to Melbourne I was invited by my friend Antonia Barnard to a screening of a film she produced called "Last Ride" based on one of them, a novel by Denise Young, a haunting and harrowing road trip story of a father on the lam from the cops with his young son in tow through the Australian outback, featuring a memorably dark turn from actor Hugo Weaving and beautifully photographed by up and coming Oz cinematographer Greig Fraser, who is going to be a star.

One of my favorite books of the last few years was the father/daughter story "Flim Flam Man" written by Minneapolis journalist Jennifer Vogel about growing up under the spell of her charismatic but criminal father John. 

No relation to the 1967 Irving Kershner film of the same name starring George C. Scott, the paperback edition of Vogel's memoir was subtitled: The True Story of my Father's Counterfeit Life, which is a nice description of growing up in the '70's and 80's in Minnesota in a home where the truth was so elusive, and a girl who develops a kind-of gold-plated bullshit detector as a result. Wildly funny at times, achingly sad at others, the writing is pitch-perfect and captures that feeling of "a blessing in disguise" familiar to any survivors of a dark legacy, who have the ability to make a gift out of what others might see as a curse.

(Full disclosure, I have been developing a film based on the book with Jennifer and partners over the last several years, hoping that a dramedy that takes an honest look at the human condition can still find a home in today's marketplace.)

So if Father's Day put you in the mood to read a classic tale of an all-American Dad gone bad or an Aussie father gone worse, you could do worse than to check out Jennifer Vogel's book, or go online and watch the trailer for Glendyn Ivin's film.

william

You Know What Day It Is

Well, if you don't, young Miss Natalie sure does!!

Goodbye Kindergarten.

Hello, Summer!

william

Piccoli Sogni

In 1953, the photographer Phillipe Halsman turned his hand to writing and collaborated with the artist Paul Julian on a children's book called "Piccoli", the story of Piccoli Sogni (little dreams) a tiny girl who lives in a matchbox, and is given by a mysterious stranger as a gift to a sad young boy whom she helps inspire and turn his life around.

Paul Julian is one of those unsung pop artists whose work you are probably quite familiar with without even knowing it - he draw the backgrounds for years for Looney Tunes cartoons including Sylvester and Tweety and later for UPA cartoons like Mister Magoo. He is even credited with having voiced the famous Beep Beep sound for The Road Runner, which he created in the parking lot of the studio one day!

I love his colorful drawings in this book, like this one when Piccoli battles Cocky the cockroach and then paints his shell.

It is a complete mystery to me why this charming book has never been reprinted. Collectors editions go for hundreds of dollars at antique book sites. 

So much of what is manufactured and pumped out as stories for children today have the weight and feel of lead balloons in their coarse commercial approach to turning our kids into little brand consumers.

"Piccoli" is that rare magical book that truly is magic in its simple story and exquisite drawings. I wish it was available to all!

Enjoy!

william